Wall Street Journal: Death Penalty Goes on Trial in North Carolina

“About 95% of the state’s death-row population, or 152 inmates including Mr. Rouse, filed bias claims by the August deadline, according to the North Carolina attorney general’s office. The law also allows future capital-murder defendants to claim racial bias. Convicts whose petitions were successful would instead face life sentences, with no chance of parole.

North Carolina’s new law is among the most hotly debated responses to recent criticism of the death penalty. Many states have rethought the sentence amid new genetic evidence that has freed some inmates.

Maryland has suspended its use of the death penalty while it reviews whether lethal injection causes undue pain; Texas last year passed a law to improve legal representation in death-penalty appeals. New Jersey and New Mexico in recent years abolished the death penalty.”